Surely we're made of sterner stuff!?

Fraser,
With respect - I would submit that if you were told - "Fraser, your proposal is wacky!" the statement may be interpreted "Fraser, YOU are wacky to support such a proposal." (And you may substitute "crazy" for "wacky" or whatever.) This is personal criticism.

However, if you were told - "Fraser, current principles do not support your proposal because …" then the emphasis is shifted to the SUBJECT of your proposal rather than to yourself. You don't feel personally criticised.

This was my point.

Anyway - I felt compelled to make these observations.


PS I'm not the footballer type Faulkner.

I have to back Chook up on this one. I read the thread and felt that VanderL was being belittled and ridiculed because of his viewpoint.

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The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower...drives my green age!
It is only with the heart that things can be seen clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye!

People on both sides need to tone things down. But you have to ask yourselves, if you tell someone over and over and over the fallacies in their arguments and show them how science doesn't back up their ideas, and they continue to spout them as truth, when is enough enough? It doesn't make sense to continue to argue for a theory which is obviously incorrect. The electric cosmos theory is obviously wrong. Just read the thread. I don't think VanderL himself has been called a wacko. The theory he argued for, however,is obviously is a bit wacky given all the evidence. His search for the truth has to be commended and his asking so many questions lately instead of just saying "well this is what i believe so there" is damn impressive. Takes a lot to question the things you hold as truth.

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I agree with Josh and I have to say, I too have been impressed at how VanderL has been asking questions lately, in his search for truth. Without wishing to get onto the subject of religion, I think many people develop such a strong "faith" in some theories that it does become almost a religion of sorts and sometimes questions are no longer asked. With that in mind, I commend VanderL for his questioning spirit and his search for the truth.

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"The stars are my home"
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tanhauser Gate... all those moments will be lost, in time... like tears in the rain..."

Here, here!

When you stop questioning things, you're already half-dead.

OK - thanks for all that.

Maybe I was being a bit too sensitive to people's feelings.

Debate is great, mate;
but don't hurt the skirt!

(VanderL is a girl I think.)

Chook, I think the L stands for Louis.

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The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower...drives my green age!
It is only with the heart that things can be seen clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye!

Hahahahah!
Sorry Louis - I thought it stood for "Lulu"

Debate is great, mate;
but be nice-as-pie to the guy!.

(Geez - I know that's terrible, but it IS 6.30am in the morning (yawn))

..."don't hurt the skirt"..."be as nice-as-pie to the guy"...

Ha ha, I can see we've got a lot of poets in this forum?! Maybe we should start a new post to showcase peoples' wares???

You been discussing behind my back again? All the time I thought you people had turned away in disgust at the discussion.
I am searching for knowledge and the Electric model does give a lot of credible explanations on craterings and stuff like that, it was worth to read it all. I still don't write it off yet (I'm a stubborn as the next guy), it's a "dark horse" for me (better than dark matter or dark energy).
There's one thing I want to add to the "be nice" discussion, I hate the term debunking and utter nonsense in the title. That way, it's not about discussing or disagreeing, instead it starts with the conviction that all that follows is crap, I'd rather discuss how this model can be wrong and still sound plausible.

L doesn't stand for Louis, Lulu or whatever, it's just my "extremely-heard-to-pronounce" last name that I don't want to throw at you all.
Cheers.

Good on ya VanderL - you sound a thoroughly genuine & nice guy.

("L" doesn't stand for Luna-tic does it? h34r: )

I know what Chook stands for, but I can think a whole bunch more.
If you want to know, my last name is: van de Locht (yes, Dutch) and once an American guy shortened it and it stuck.
Cheers.

Hey VanderL,
The name Lulu is a whole lot easier to say, may we call you that?

__________________
The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower...drives my green age!
It is only with the heart that things can be seen clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye!

Right, you deserved it, you can call me Sir.

Is that spelt CUR?

Anyway - do you think the rules may be constructively modified in any way to encourage "niceness" or, as they say, is it impossible to "ruleify" it?

Maybe the boys are right - we all keep the tone non-personal, and if somebody accidentaly gets out of hand we mention it to them.

Actually it's been pretty good, up to now, with a couple of minor exceptions.

(PS It was obvious that VanderL(ulu) was of Dutch origin. How long have your antecedents been settled in the States?

Another thing - you say that VanderL stands for Van de Locht. Strange! "De" is usually French, whereas "Der" would be more Dutch. Was the "De" a typo?)

Sorry, didn't I say? I live in The Netherlands and my ancestors have lived here for at least 300 years, possibly forever.
"VanderL" is what a US guy (he was a visitor to the lab that I work) made of it, the people at my work picked it up, it's just to make an allusion to the Vander"whatevers" that seem to be successful in the States. "de" or "der" are both used in Dutch, the "r" gets added sometimes whenever a vowel follows, and sometimes it is used to make it sound different, like Vanderbilt which would probably have been van de Bilt (de Bilt is a town near Utrecht).
I've been to San Francisco a few times (great city), otherwise I'm happy here in Malden (close to Nijmegen, which is also a great city).

Anyway, the niceness can't really be regulated, but certain words should be avoided, I guess hearing something called wacky or utter nonsense, or even BS is never encouraging. But I'm old enough to decide for myself if the evidence is convincing or not, and if the discussion becomes unfriendly in my opnion, I will say so and hope it gets better, or I just stop posting to that thread or person.
Cheers.

just wanted to pledge my show of support. I dislike anti-intellectuals :P

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I am forever striving for increased perfection of my understanding of this world we live in. My quest through life is knowledge and I am but a child on this ubiquitous journey, as are we all. Knowledge, like the universe, is infinite.

Sorry, my last post was refering to the set of rules established by Fraser, Kashi, etc. But I think Chook says it best:

"This IS a forum for argument and debate - but at the same scholarly level as you would expect from the same august universities from which these scientists were educated."

That's why I'm here. It's very hard to find a network of people you can discuss with at a scientific level, which is by far the most enlightening. I believe this to be a fact and I fully support any and all measures that ensures the sustainment of this integrity. I mean, where else can I go to pick the brains of physicists, chemists, engineers, astrologists, cosmologists, geophysicists, etc, etc - in one room?What we have here is something really great and I hope it does not become tainted with the likes of what I consider, "anti-intellectuals." We're all surrounded by them everyday. We don't need them here too.

Robert

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I am forever striving for increased perfection of my understanding of this world we live in. My quest through life is knowledge and I am but a child on this ubiquitous journey, as are we all. Knowledge, like the universe, is infinite.

..... back to Fraser <_< .

You may not post porno, racistic oriented messages and you may not harass people. My question is if you can freely talk about subjects as gay, suicide, murder, psychiatry while there are kids around? I thought about posting an off topic question about the subject if provoking suicide is really punished by law in Great Britain and the US. Because as far as I know, where I live in Belgium the general opinion is people shouldn't be that weak that they can easily be influenced to commit suicide. I met that kind of histories for the first time in Gibson's novel "Idoru" and for me it was only (science) fiction until they started to tell a rather vage history about Blair in the news. Maybe now I'm harassing a person, but then I think you should rather blame the BBC and other news sources. Maybe you think I can better discuss this kind of stories in a more to the subject related board and in that case you may be right about that. Only is it worth all the pain to subscribe if it is maybe the only thing you will ever discuss overthere? h34r:

Hope there's room for a few of us "lay" people here, too! There are plenty of other forums specifically geared to professional scientists & grad students etc...where you can exchange all your technical gobbledygook, ha. The beauty of this forum is its openness to all, young & old, professionally educated & (duh) society misfits like myself.

I totally support Faulkner - Quote:
"The beauty of this forum is its openness to all, young & old, professionally educated & (duh) society misfits like myself. "
(- and me).

As long as we respect each other's opinion, and genuinely like each other, I can see great advantages in being free to debate anything from "Natural Childbirth" to "Does the tree have a brain?" (Or - "I think Christians are misguided!")

The key quality is respect for each other's considered and unbiased opinion and, being members of this forum, we should be capable of logically and vigorously defending our opinion.

Makes life intresting .

I totally support Chook here. I have the greatest respect for ALL the members of this forum, and I can see they're from ALL walks of life. Just goes to show how something honest & REAL like "the Universe" can attract EVERYone...